Musk disputes report of December Tesla Optimus reservations
Tesla could open Optimus reservations in early December, robotics investor Modar Alaoui told The San Francisco Standard, but Elon Musk appeared to deny the plan. Responding on X on October 30, the Tesla CEO posted “No.” The conflicting accounts leave the proposed reservation opening disputed, while Musk has put deliveries to outside companies around the end of 2027.
Alaoui, an investor at ALM Ventures and organizer of The Humanoids Summit, said Tesla told him reservations would open during the December 1 to 2 conference in San Mateo or in the following days. According to Alaoui, Tesla is a key conference partner and plans to demonstrate Optimus V3 at the event.
He said most robots would be sold to companies, with a smaller allocation for consumers, and that the first shipment was expected to use the V3 model. Earlier versions were primarily prototypes, he said. The Standard put the expected price above $20,000, but the reservation deposit has not been established.
Production starts with engineering issues still open
The reservation report comes as Tesla builds manufacturing capacity for Optimus in Fremont. In January, Musk announced plans to end Model X and Model S production and convert those sections of the factory to robot manufacturing. During Tesla’s October earnings call, he said Optimus production had started at the facility.
Musk also acknowledged that the robot still has problems with its AI, electromechanical design and operating duration. “I do expect these issues to be solved around the end of next year,” he said. “So that’s the time to expect when we’re delivering Optimus to companies outside of Tesla.”
That schedule separates any potential reservation opening from customer deployment by roughly a year. For industrial buyers, the immediate development is Tesla’s manufacturing effort rather than an orderable robot with a settled delivery date. Musk said Tesla needs to produce between 10,000 and 20,000 robots to gather training data as they practice tasks.
The company’s consumer ambitions add another layer of difficulty. Household work requires robots to handle varied environments and the movements of people and animals, rather than repeat a task at a fixed industrial workstation. Tesla nevertheless expects the Fremont facility to reach production of 20,000 Optimus robots per week by roughly the end of 2027, according to Musk’s October call.
Source: sfstandard.com
